The Good Ship in Kilburn before its closure 

A POPULAR independent venue that helped boost the career of Adele has been resurrected in Germany as part of the singer’s world tour.

The Good Ship in Kilburn High Road hosted late-night music and a weekly comedy club until closed in 2017 following a late night licensing dispute.

Its former owner told the New Journal this week about a special evening Adele performed at the venue before she had a record deal or became a famous celebrity selling out huge venues around the world.

She performed at The Good Ship on August 12 2006, 11 months after it opened and just before she got herself signed.

John McCooke, who owned The Good Ship at the time, said: “She was mega-confident, without being arrogant.

“She was a really good laugh. There was no primadonna-ness about her.

“She was just really, really normal.

“I’ve seen interviews with her since and she doesn’t appear to have changed particularly, she just seems really sweet.

“I remember that night so well. Adele starting, and then it was Peggy Sue and The Pirates. And then it was Kate Nash. The headliner was a band called Wrong Animal.”

John McCooke

Now the Someone Like You singer is paying homage to the venue by including a recreation of it at “Adele World”, a pop- up stadium specially constructed for her tour.

Publicists for the Adele World tour said a temporary model of the bar has been created in the stadium in Munich, Germany.

The real Good Ship shut in 2017 after a dispute with the council about late-night hours.

Mr McCooke, who grew up in Kilburn, said: “I just wanted to create something good in my neighbourhood. We brought some life and some colour to the high street.

“It was really essential for us to stay open late on a Friday and Saturday because it essentially funded all the other stuff we did.

“We paid all the artists really, really well.

“We basically went from being a business that was barely sort of ticking over, to being a business that was making a loss every week.

“And making a loss was really horrible. Small music venues need as much support as they can get.”

He added: “The Kilburn I know is a really dull high street now. It’s not a happy high street either.

“It’s just a shame, because seven years later, that building is still a shell. There’s nothing there.

“And, you know, we could’ve still had a live music venue there in Kilburn.

“I am a bit bitter about it, but at the same time I had 12 largely fun years and it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”

Kilburn’s loss is Munich’s gain.

Adele’s way of paying tribute to a venue where she performed a gig in her early career was to create a model of The Good Ship that now exists within the grounds of a purpose-built 80,000 seat outdoor arena.